It's nice to get stuck into my blog on a regular basis after letting it fall by the wayside in recent months. There simply isn't enough hours in the day to cover everything, including work, family and other commitments. Quite often though, when I sit my arse down on the settee and there's nowt on the telly, I turn to my laptop and conjure up something to pass the time away. If it's photography related then that suits me fine, which includes writing about my outings with the camera and relaying them to Joe Public, via my blog page. Over the last year or so I've taken an interest in time lapse photography, after seeing one or two creations online and thinking to myself 'Hey, I wouldn't mind dabbling in a bit of that.' As visitors to my site may well know by now, it's not just still photography that interests me. I occasionally flirt with video, which is predominantly aerial, from my eye in the sky drone, plus the recent time lapses I've created with my GoPro action cam. It's the GoPro aspect that I'm gonna touch on today, as I bring you an insight with behind the scenes pictures and also direct links to the finished time lapse.
First of all, the tools. Last Christmas my wife bought me a GoPro Hero 5 (black edition), which was a big surprise - I certainly didn't see it coming. Well, it beats the obligatory pair of socks and a box of After Eights !!! (Only joking Amanda, if you're reading this lol). I quickly got to grips with it and was immediately impressed at how much tech was packed into this tiny waterproof box. Although it's capable of pulling in some stunning 4K video footage, at 30 frames per second, I'm more than happy with the full HD 1920x1080p mp4's it delivers too, especially at 120 fps. The camera can be controlled through the GoPro app on my phone, which is a very handy side line, plus Bluetooth and Wi-Fi for good measure. The rear LCD touchscreen is excellent - a feature that is non-existent on previous incarnations of the GoPro cam. Also featured is a burst function at 30fps, Night Lapse and Time Lapse (photo and video). With advanced wind noise reduction, this piece of kit seems to have it all.
So off I went, with my little shoulder bag, armed with my GoPro, a tripod, and a Rollei ePano 360 motorized swivel head, The swivel head would enable me to capture some motion time lapse, as it panned across my chosen scene. It's battery powered, with an internal rechargeable cell that would give me at least a couple of hours of shooting from a full charge. Setting up was fairly straightforward and the trickiest part, if there really was one, was levelling off the tripod legs and ball head. Keeping the panning head level as it made a 180 sweep was very important. Failure to level the legs and head correctly would almost certainly produce a poor time lapse with a bad horizon, so I double checked everything before I set the GoPro away. The pano head has a few different settings, including panning 360 degrees, panning 180 degrees from left to right and back again, plus a 90 degree pan with a 30 second pause, before panning again, pausing and panning again. No doubt I'll try all of these eventually, but right now I'm gonna pan from left to right at 180 degrees. So, where have I visited? Well, I've ticked off a time lapse at Newcastle Quayside, the new River Wear Crossing, Seaham Pier, Sunderland's East End and Penshaw Monument, amongst others. I've put each time lapse into a compilation video and this, along with a few others, can be found on my YouTube Channel. FEEL FREE TO SUBSCRIBE !!!
This time lapse carry on is addictive and I'll be doing plenty more of them in the near future, so keep an eye out for them. Cheers.
Ash
